It was not till the period of a generation after the death of George Washington, when the most prominent of those who stood for pure conservative government were no more, and Washington, himself the greatest single obstacle to political humbug in the country, was but a memory, that the barriers were finally removed so that the army of professional politicians were enabled to get possession of every government in the United States. Commencing with that time the political control which the fathers had endeavored to place permanently in the hands of the best, most enlightened and most efficient was gradually transferred to the hands of some of the worst, most ignorant and incompetent. This mischievous transfer was due mostly to the operation of manhood suffrage. It is by the admission to the electorate of the poorest quality of material that politics has been degraded to its present low level; that it has become a business to be conducted for profit; that professional politicians have obtained and retained power; that the intelligence and manhood of the nation have been deprived of their rightful control over its destiny; and that the country has been handed over to gangs of sordid rascals to be plundered. That it has been plundered cannot be denied. The plundering has been conducted so openly, scandalously and notoriously that there is hardly a reader of this book who is not more or less familiar with some of the details, though its extent is so great that no one not a student of the subject can be familiar with it all.